a niente
by Lecherous Fever
Summary: AKA: The Rain Never Falls In Twilight Town. He thinks, not for the first time, that maybe fate is only applicable to those who wish to defy it. -Axel/Roxas


**Disclaimer/** I most definitely do not own Kingdom Hearts, nor any of the characters therein. I wouldn't share them if I did. :3 We have the wonderful Tetsuya Nomura and Squeenix to thank for that. I am not worthy, not ever. *Throws self to floor*

* * *

"How many times?"

The redhead's voice travelled thick in the air between them, altogether compressing and inescapable despite their distance from each other. His senses were attuned as he adjusted his grip on the lighter Keyblade in his left hand. His pursuer had to be standing on the margin, a few feet shy of the Fragment Crossing. Roxas took another shuddering breath, not daring to face the convincing shadows of hurt and accusation that were sure to be on his face, if his tone was anything to go by.

"What?" he managed to choke out sharply into the air without moving. In truth, he really didn't want him to explain or even repeat himself - he'd known this was coming from the second he'd caught sight of those spikes in his peripheral vision while he'd been dancing brutal circles around his target, those eyes a piercing jade even without him being close enough to see them as more than a blur set into the redhead's angular face.

"You know what I'm talking about, Roxas." His voice was now a little too soft, attempts of anger fighting with hurt and meshing disgracefully, and it all being held back with the smallest of sighs. Roxas felt rather than heard his measured footsteps drawing ever closer. "How many times have you done this? How many times have you- how…" Axel's steps slowed to a stop. He, for once, seemed incapable of articulating his words. "How many times have you, you know… fought him?" Roxas pulled up his hood against the fermata of raindrops seeking refuge on the dark world's ground. He glanced upward, past the looming height of Memory's Skyscraper, seeing the swirling canvas of clouds above as dark and foreboding as they had ever been. It always rained here. He kept his line of vision _right there_, pointedly not turning around and looking at Axel. How dare he have the right to sound… cheated? Like he'd been left out of something? Roxas clenched his fists, willing his Keyblades back into their respective light and dark spaces.

"Do you think it'll ever stop?" he asked to the emptiness.

"Huh?" The blond's query had been almost less than a whisper, just about lost to the wind. But he heard it. And just for a moment, it distracted Axel from the fact that he was seeking an answer himself.

"The rain…" Roxas turned around to face him, his gaze still following the unchanging dark sky. "I've never seen this world _not raining_. Have you?" Axel thought for a moment, regarding his companion's unfocused stare and repeating his softly-uttered words in his head.

"No," he conceded after a long pause, during which the city filled the air with its quiet buzz of white noise - all rain and emptiness and neon lights, just the same as it ever was.

_Never Was,_ Axel's mind helpfully supplied.

"But, I suppose… the sun doesn't have the right to shine here. We're right on the edge of Darkness, Rox."

The shorter boy finally looked at him straight. The first thing that struck Axel was the ineloquent but definitely present sense of something missing, something in his eyes that didn't quite add up to the Roxas that he knew. There was a stirring in those depths that called to him with resigned, almost _hollow_ cries, a deafeningly empty opus echoing the inner universe of the composer. Axel swallowed thickly, hating himself for even thinking it - but for the first time, Roxas seemed to him like the Nobody he professed to be. Something was dead within him. And though he had no physical heart to testify it, he'd have sworn on whatever existence he laid claim to that it honestly _hurt_ him a little to even venture a guess as to what it was.

_It's not right… Roxas, what did you do?_

The blond had switched focus to the ground, and left a considerable pause before acknowledging the other's assertion.

"Huh." Roxas rolled the idea around in his head, trying to ascertain why it shot something cold through his blood to hear it said out loud, while still feeling a sense of confirmation, like it was just what he'd been expecting to hear. Didn't have the _right._ That was certainly a way of putting it.

"He said something like that about Twilight Town." This time around, Axel chose to remain silent, instead inclining his head as a means of questioning.

"He said it was just like- just like this place. Belonging neither to the realm of Light, or the realm of Darkness. But Twilight Town's close to the Light… Maybe that's why the rain never falls there."

"Oh, so _that's_ why you're trying to sneak off like that. You hate the rain." The sarcasm tasted far worse in Axel's mouth after the words had leeched out. Not that it really mattered, when Roxas paid it as much attention as a corpse would its boxed underground cavern. The older of the two was becoming increasingly aware that striking up a conversation with him - at least, one that made sense in all the forms that language demanded - was turning into something a lot like hunting the elusive.

"…Riku," Roxas stated by way of explanation. He cast his eyes to the side, as if it might stir up some sort of memory, or generate a way for him to explain it all in the smallest number of words possible. As if looking at his comrade made him any less likely to say what he meant to. "His name is Riku." Axel picked up on his train of thought rather than questioning the deviation.

"The kid you were fighting?"

"Yeah. I knew him- I mean, Sora knew him. I… I _remembered_his name." He met Axel's eyes again. "I see him sometimes, the way Sora did." Axel's thin eyebrows drew slightly closer together.

"Your memories are coming back?" he asked deceptively softly.

"Kinda. I… dream a lot." The redhead resisted the very real urge to say 'I know'; there had been more than one night when he'd been pacing the empty expanses of the Castle, only to hear a few broken mumbles in the tale of how Riku turned his back on him, how he wouldn't give up Kairi's heart, and just where was his island? But Axel already knew enough of that story. This was one of the few times he'd felt guilty for not relaying it to his favourite Organization member turned best friend - but, in all truth, any attempt he'd made before to tell him something, to just give him a _hint_ of who his Other was and what he was like; any words he articulated died in the face of that intransgressible innocence. Axel was abruptly jerked out of his reverie by the continuation of the voice that it belonged to.

"I remember things he's seen. Things he's done. But I still…" Roxas shook his head almost imperceptibly and closed his eyes.

"That's the first time I've fought him," he stated in answer to Axel's first question. Roxas looked up at him again. "But… we were equal." He gave a wistful smile that didn't really belong to him, and Axel's jaw clenched as the shadow remnant of some old and untitled emotion flitted through the empty cavern of his chest.

"We're just as good as each other." For the briefest of seconds, he wasn't the Roxas that fought alongside him and shared sea-salt ice-cream with him on good days and ploughed relentlessly through extra hordes of Heartless on bad ones. For the briefest of seconds, his angular face became infinitesimally softer, and Axel swore he saw the ghost of a certain young hero he'd crossed paths with in Castle Oblivion take his place. He'd done something strange and unfamiliar to that hollow in his chest, too… How he'd continued to traverse Oblivion knowing his own memories were lies, and the way he defended the girl who'd all but erased the foundations of his very existence. Axel had thought it borderline martyrdom on the small boy's part, but he could see it now. That kid was born to be a hero, and the best part of his current existence was ingeminated in the form of his own best friend.

_But for how much longer?_

"You tossed him one of your blades," Axel folded his willowy arms over his chest and began pacing around, partially in distraction, yet was careful not to put too much distance between them. "Why put yourself at a disadvantage?" The smaller boy shrugged.

"Seemed like the right thing to do. He fought the Heartless, too… something told me he would."

His display hit like a torrent of icicles, chilling and slicing him every which way for reasons Axel couldn't really formulate. Something akin to anger worked its way through the taller Nobody's system and his words shot out, uncompromisingly acerbic, faster than his mind could stop to consider them.

"Oh, and I suppose plotting against your _comrades_ seemed like 'the right thing to do' as well?" He gestured wildly, arms flailing seemingly of their own volition. His mind was content to ignore the sting of hypocrisy for now. "For that minute, right there, you were ready to walk away and betray the Organization! I heard what he said! And you- you'd really follow him? God, Roxas, what the hell did you think you were doing?"

"He knew him, Axel!" the blond yelled, uncharacteristically ferocious, enough to take the other by surprise. He took a stance far too close to a fighting one for comfort, cobalt blue eyes challenging and defensive in the forefront. "Riku knew Sora! He might have had some answers - and _fuck,_ I could use some answers!"

Axel ran a wet, gloved hand through his dripping hair, the usually vivid shade barely even living up to a deep crimson in the half-light of their city's everlasting dusk.

"I know you, Roxas." His voice came gentler this time, but still firm in its silent resolve. "I know you want answers, but I know that you would have gone and left us. C'mon, Rox… you really wanna waste your time chasing shadows? You really think they wouldn't destroy you for it?" He stepped closer, gently resting his hands on Roxas' shoulders. "They wouldn't let you live, you know." The words, aspirant whispers, slid like velvet over the younger boy.

"You _know_ me." The blond scoffed quietly, averting his eyes. "Huh. I'd love to know how the hell you managed that when I don't even know myself."

"You're missing the point!" Axel shook him slightly, bending to better stare him in the eyes. He relaxed his expression into blankness, and lowered his tone. "Roxas. They would have given the order to kill you. And, you know what? They'd make _me_ do it." Seeing the bruised and chaotic ocular sea swimming in front of him, he instantly regretted uttering the words, and Roxas instantly regretted hearing them. A cold sensation tore knots in his stomach, bringing an impossible gravity to the centre of his being as he stared into depths of green, pools that were definitely not as empty or as shallow as they should have been.

_Shit_. He'd never considered that they might pass the blame on to Axel.

"Axel," he breathed. He allowed gloved hands to push his hood down and was met with the familiar pitter-patter of raindrops against his head, his cheeks, the bridge of his nose. He closed his eyes. "I'm sorry." Roxas could feel warm expelled air spilling over his face in cadence with the sky's tears.

"I don't want them to hurt you," he whispered with a desperate, innocuous air. "I just… I wanna know-"

The eavesdropping tendrils hanging in the dark city's air would never themselves bear witness to the fact that Roxas simply wanted to know who he was, who his Other had been… _anything_; for Axel chose that moment to swallow his words with cold, salty-edged lips. They're not what he expects - not that he's ever dwelt on the thought before in restless, lonely hours; no, damnit, he_hasn't_ - but just the whole sensation of it is incredible all the same. Roxas knows that they're freezing, they have to be - though the rain is windless, still its chill snakes around him, presses his clothes into his skin until they might as well be part of it - but he's conscious of every place they touch, and the way it eradicates or else overpowers the cold. The hands that were a weight on his slim shoulders now seem to burn right through, and those moving lips send shockwaves through his own. He feels like all the nerves connecting them are alive with inexplicable yet dominating electricity; and if he weren't so busy wondering why he was giving in to Axel's touch, Roxas might have sworn that the air between them was crackling.

However, all too soon, that feeling is gone, only the small lingering aura of heat indicative of anything that had happened only a few seconds prior. Only through some nameless innate reaction was Roxas able to regain his composure and resist helplessly reaching back.

"What- what was that?" he said after an inestimable period of silence. The bite he fully intended to be behind his words deserted him, and he was left to stare up into the face of the person who had single-handedly tipped the balance of his carefully constructed world. Uncharacteristically, Axel offered no words to his statement, just continued to stare at him in the manner of one who was truly done with words.

Roxas studied him so carefully, not missing the infinitesimal droplets of water that clung to his dark eyelashes, but somehow missing the way his own body seemed to edge backwards of its own accord into the wall of an alley as his best friend-cum-destroyer shuffled ever-gracefully forward. Rainwater? Or something else?

_We feel nothing. We have no emotions._

He ran his hands along bony shoulder blades as he felt himself melt the tiniest bit more into the cold wall, and that image of the unidentified water droplet avoiding a suicide fall was gone as Axel's eyes closed and his whole head focused its attention elsewhere.

_We cannot cry. We do not feel sorrow, joy, pain. Nobodies… do not truly exist._

Roxas' small deliberation was discarded as the rain continued its downward plight on the both of them, their bodies moving and responding to each other without even thinking about it. His lips found Axel's, and he closed his eyes against the should-be-nonexistent feeling of it - tasting him, their kisses reverting between insistent and impossibly gentle, and rapidly becoming closer to dependency than desire.

_Nobodies like us are only half a person. We don't have hearts._

_But we remember what it was like._

He had suspected it all along, but Roxas would soon learn that memory was something which held the highest importance in his existence, or even an apparent lack thereof. And he thought he understood. Just the memory; just the shadow of what a person could feel… it was the most real thing he'd ever known. Sometimes, the memory was enough.

Even as the two of them managed to slide off their soaked and clinging uniforms as joint effort between chronic and shatteringly pleasurable touches, even as unbelievably _real_ as it felt to have someone holding him, entering him; as undeniably good as Axel felt just taking him right there in the corner of their empty neon city; Roxas ignored the little inconsistencies. So what if they were doomed to never truly feel? For now, he was happy to pretend, even if it didn't take much effort, his body alive and humming an incandescent melody to Axel's without his will's intervention. The redhead was staring at him now with heavy eyes, all the passion and lust and excitement that he shouldn't have possessed reflecting out for the world to never see. Even so. Those eyes couldn't cry; Roxas was sure of it.

_It had to be the rain,_ he thought. And then, somewhere between the coalescing of sweat and raindrops and scraping artificial walls, he didn't think at all.

* * *

It was on the fourth day that Axel finally took it upon himself to revisit their old favourite spot, on the uppermost ledge of the station's clock tower. Twilight Town was a quiet, simple place, where its inhabitants all led quiet, simple lives, and its virtual counterpart was no different. He remembered a now distant conversation with Roxas in Never Was, about why the rain never fell in Twilight Town. That Riku, who had turned out to be a cohort of Naminé's strange and bandaged captor, told Roxas something about the rain not being allowed to fall here. Too close to the light, he'd said, and then proceeded to fight and take back what was the last missing piece of his best friend Sora.

That night, Axel was sure he'd done it. Talked him out of even considering leaving the Organization… maybe even given him a reason to stay.

After his second clash with Riku, Roxas never set foot in Never Was again.

Axel looked over the infallible sunset that encapsulated this world without rain, and almost wanted to curse it for being so. Incessant rain belonged in The World That Never Was; but then, he'd thought his best friend did too. He almost wanted the unexpected water droplets to fall and stain the simplistic and happy town, just as a testimony, something to aid him in his quest to fool himself that _this_ _wasn't happening_. An uninvited macabre parody of pain poured into him when he recalled his favourite set of cobalt blue eyes. He had seen them in their many incarnations; angry, desperate, even joyous - all those things Roxas as an alleged Nobody shouldn't have been able to manifest. But the way he'd seen them earlier that day, in pure, unadulterated confusion, was the one way that dared rip his nonexistent heart in two.

_He really doesn't remember._

Vivid shades of red, orange and pink were projected all across the sky as the sun admitted a slow defeat to the horizon. And though it bored into the earth just as warmly and brightly as it had during the day, it was not enough to lift the desolate chill that hung thick in the air around him. He smiled to himself. Becoming a slave to your own selfish desires wasn't all it was cracked up to be. Axel dropped two melting, untouched sticks of sea-salt flavoured ice-cream from the side of the building, not even entirely sure why he'd brought them and uncaring of where they might land. The place wasn't real anyway. He lowered himself to a sitting position on the small precipice, not taking his eyes off the data version of the town he'd grown to like less and less by the day. He watched silently as dark shades and a spattering of stars took over the skyline, and resolved to never visit the clock tower again; not if he could help it.

A small, cursory laugh escaped his lips. For someone who didn't truly exist, he was surely talented when it came to thinking himself in circles. He summoned a dark portal, hazarding one last look over the fake world. Axel tried to ignore the fact that the next time he came here, it would have to be with the intent to destroy Roxas; tried to ignore an unfamiliar wetness travelling down his left cheek.

_I'm not real, and neither are you_.

Axel stepped into the blackness. He drew his hood up against the dark corridor and kept his head down for the entire lonely return trip to Never Was. He arrived at Memory's Skyscraper a short time later, and glanced up at the giant screen dominating it. A more familiar version of a certain blond he once knew looked back down at him, and he holds a worthless memory inside his head all the way back to the Castle, all the way back to his empty room. He dismissed the subservient group of Assassins and Dusks waiting for him there, and picked up a stray book left in one of the extensive room's corners. Must have been from the library, he thought. It sure as hell wasn't his. He faintly recalled a night not so long ago, where Roxas was sat there with the very book in his hands, the two of them just idly chatting away for the night, for anything to do but waste their time dwelling on the discrepancies of who they were or weren't. Maybe they'd done it to feel human. Maybe because, in some part of themselves, they'd actually wanted to.

Flicking through the book's flyleaf, he told himself that's what it was. An easy façade. Even as he honestly tries to read the words on the pages, they skate right over without any meaning, and in the end, he opts for letting out an unheard sigh and hurling the book somewhere he doesn't have to pay it any mind. It couldn't be long now, until he would be summoned to throw in some feedback and offer himself and his assigned mission up as a failure. Axel stalks over to his adjoining balcony and stares out over the view of a city he could only describe as Twilight Town's polar opposite. Tonight the air seems more still than usual, and the rain still falls uninterrupted in its melancholic sheets. He's not sure if it's the city's pollution or a particularly persistent shadow of the person he was once part of, but his eyes begin to sting violently. Or maybe it's just the rain. Tomorrow, Axel will have a very different mission indeed. An assassination to follow a failed retrieval. A twisted distortion of a wistful smile steals across his face.

He thinks, not for the first time, that maybe fate is only applicable to those who wish to defy it.

* * *

**Notes/ **This was written in attempt to alleviate a horrible prolonged artistic block, though you can probably see that its influence was still hanging over me. Bear with me. I'm... regaining my flow, or something like that xD. Here's a small Kingdom Hearts fic. It isn't very pleasant by any definition of the word, but constructive criticism would be much desired and appreciated.

Thanks for reading! ^_^ Proverbial cookies to those of you who survived this far!


End file.
